All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
01:09:44 · Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sacks, Jason Calacanis
[01:09:44] S2: No. I don't think this is the priority. Again, I think people will get animated about this issue, but I don't think this matters. And I think that to the extent that people legislate an oligopoly, it'll further entrench economic power, and I think that that's counter to what these people want. So I think when they put the... They connect the dots, I don't think that that's what's going to get legislated. I don't think they have the energy for that. And I think at [01:10:07] S1: What's the end gonna get legislated is the quid pro quo, okay? The quid pro quo is this, the government gets more power and the duopoly of closed model companies get more regulatory capture or moats around their business. That's gonna be the quid pro quo. The government's gonna come in. The Democratic Congress is gonna say, look, we have to regulate this. It's unsafe. What do you think those companies are gonna do? You think they're gonna say, no, you can't do that? They're gonna say, okay, You know, let's work together on this. [01:10:36] S2: I think what's gonna happen is, [01:10:37] S1: government ends up with more power, and those companies end up with regulatory protection. [01:10:41] S0: Moff, go ahead.
01:10:41 · Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya
[01:10:41] S0: Moff, go ahead. [01:10:41] S2: I don't think so. I think... Yeah. I think that if... To the extent that anybody legislates AI, I think it's gonna be broad based and include a lot of coverage around data centers and AI factories. And to the extent that that happens, maybe you'll get some regulatory capture on the one end, but you're gonna constrain the supply so severely on the other that the that the real people that will be in control of it are Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and SpaceX. And so you have to remember, the foundational model companies are not home free. What does home free mean? That they have a fortress balance sheet, a profitable business model, and and quasi infinite compute for their own ambitions. And right now, they are renters. And the renter class in data centers as of Tuesday is very much at risk. And so if anything, I think what's gonna happen is all the renter classes will get co opted. For example, I don't know if you guys saw today, but Google just took over a Crusoe data center. They co opted the renter. They're like, you're gone. We're gonna take it over. [01:11:48] S0: They did?
01:11:48 · Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya
[01:11:48] S0: They did? [01:11:49] S2: Yeah. So why is that happening? It's because they have all of the core critical ingredients, specifically the power. So I think even a reg capture campaign can only work to the extent the government then goes and violates all these other rules and says, here's all this free electricity and go build wherever you want, and we don't care about energy because there's no money to pay for that, and there's no political will to do that. So I think the practical reality is that you have the mag seven or mag eight have more power. And when they look at that calculus, I don't think politicians want that at all either side. [01:12:29] S0: You know, I did a calculation this week. I was looking at the phenomenal impact that agents are having inside of our venture capital firm launch, and we're spending 50,000... $4,050,000 Say the dollars name [01:12:41] S2: of your venture capital Launch. Launch. Thank you. Launch.com. Where can I go to learn more about that? [01:12:45] S0: To launch.com. You. [01:12:47] S2: Thank you very much.
01:12:48 · Jason Calacanis
[01:12:48] S0: Just... I'm trying to let people know I have a day job beyond podcasting. I invest in a 100 companies a year. And we have 20 people. We're spending, like, $50,000 a year, I think, $4,050,000 on these subscriptions. Grok, Claude being the main ones. I estimate we're getting $2,000,000 in value from that. I estimate we're getting about a million dollars in incremental revenue for I estimate we're getting maybe 15 to 21 in incremental revenue for the dollars we spend. In other words, the velocity of our investments is going up because we've automated everything. And the velocity in which we create new media properties is going up because we've automated everything. We're building systems. And only 10 or 20% of people in corporate America are using this technology every day on a regular basis. In other words, there's somewhere between five and ten times as many people to start using this every day. And I believe when they go to AgenTik, they start using this because it's so accessible to the average human being that everything gets obstructed. You don't have to learn to do code or set up your rig or your harness. You just tell it what you want, and it uses 50 times as much. So I think there's 500 to a thousand times the need for this. When that happens, this compute is gonna go wherever it needs to go. And I can tell you what we're doing is only 70, 80% of what the frontier models are capable of. We're not solving Navier or Stokes, obviously. And so we're on the verge of ordering everybody a Mac Studio of 512 k for $20,000, which would mean $400,000 in compute on people's desktops and running local models first and then falling back to them because we don't wanna be throttled. We wanna have unmetered intelligence. So offshore data centers will be the trend of the next two years. That's what you're gonna see. And desktop usage of local models. I'll just make that prediction here.
01:14:34 · David Sacks, Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya
[01:14:34] S1: Yeah. Well, let me... Can can I, yeah, can I can I respond to that? [01:14:37] S0: So open source, obviously, is the power of that. [01:14:40] S1: I think you're onto something, Jacob. Look, when we're talking about AI regulation in the next two years, I think we need to separate... There's two different things. Right? There's federal and there's state. What the feds are gonna deal with is the the AI safety and creating a federal department of AI and all of those Orwellian sorts of risk around what could turn into censorship and surveillance and control. Okay. That's one bucket of issues. There's another bucket of issues around infrastructure which will be dealt with at the state and local level, right? And both of them are gonna play out. Now at the state and local level, I I think people are just being way too optimistic about what this election means. I mean, I'm seeing like Gavin Baker saying, oh, don't worry, you know, In a hostile, she seems totally reasonable. She's not threatening any projects and, you know, I've watched interviews with her. Look, I went and watched the interviews that Gavin watched and I don't see the things that [01:15:33] S0: I agree you. [01:15:34] S2: I agree [01:15:35] S1: does not say that existing projects are protected. [01:15:37] S2: I agree. [01:15:38] S1: She simply says that there'll be no new permits issued until they pass legislation [01:15:44] S2: You're right. [01:15:44] S1: Dealing with the issues she's talking about. [01:15:46] S2: You're a 100% [01:15:47] S0: What the issues she's talking about?
01:15:49 · David Sacks
[01:15:49] S1: Beast I'll doesn't hear I'll explain it. But look, I saw an analyst from semi analysis then come out and say that you do realize that projects that are under construction right now don't necessarily have every single permit they need to actually open for business. In other words, once you've constructed the data center, you may still have to get an air pollution permit. There's various kinds of permits that sometimes you don't get till the end. So if you take what she's saying seriously and literally that there'll be no new permits passed until this new regulatory regime comes into effect, we could end up with a bunch of stranded half finished projects. Now, I'm not saying that's necessarily gonna happen. I'm not criticizing her because I don't know what she's gonna do. She hasn't even taken office yet. I'm simply pointing out that this could go a lot of ways. You know, they could do this in a reasonable way or an unreasonable way. So you could end up with a lot of half finished projects. My base case is that the projects that are fully permitted will get done in twenty twenty seven, but I don't think there's gonna be major new projects in this new regime for a long time for the simple reason that there's no political incentive for anyone to grant a new permit or a new project. What's their incentive? Think about this. In this last election, you had both Democrats and Republicans running campaign attack ads on any politician who approved any data center. So think about if you're a politician or you're just like a civil servant who maybe wants to move up the the ladder. What is your incentive to stamp approval on anything? I don't see it. I mean, I don't see anyone who is ambitious politically wanting to stick their neck out in any way to approve anything over the next four years. So, look, I think probably the ones that are already approved and fully permitted, I think those probably get done. But the ones that are not approved yet, good luck. I think it's gonna be very difficult. So I think we get by in 2027. I think there'll still be meaningful CapEx. I get really worried about 2028. And the Democrats, I think, in a way, have a perverse incentive around this because if that CapEx tanks in 2028, they all blame Trump for that. Right?